Hard to Hold

by Stephanie Tyler

  Fuck you, Jake was certainly nothing he hadn’t heard before and many times over. He’d expected to hear it from Isabelle sooner than later, but if he couldn’t be honest with her about everything, at least he wasn’t going to hold back when he thought he could help her.

  She was pushing her limits, a reaction to the fear.

  He’d been pushed beyond any limits he thought he had, especially in the military, sometimes so far he wasn’t sure he’d come out of it. But he always did, whether of his own accord or because of the skill of his instructors. He had people watching his six.

  Who did Isabelle have, really? Beyond him, there was Cal, who was lying to her, and her mother. He hadn’t heard her speak of friends, anyone, really, beyond a brief mention of her ex-fiancé and some photographer.

  She hadn’t been lying when she said she was solitary. He wondered if she’d ever be able to let him in.

  She was killing him. This assignment was killing him. And to top it all off, now his side was killing him. He didn’t think he’d pulled his stitches. Much. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Isabelle that. She would’ve laid him out on his back in the snow to fix him up.

  And yeah, he’d had enough dreams about her on top of him already not to deal with that well in a public place. So he brought himself over to Doc Welles, who’d thankfully gotten iced in overnight on the base and saw Jake right away.

  The man was the admiral’s personal doctor. The only one Jake would allow to touch him, unless Jake was unconscious, and then, who gave a fuck anyway.

  The only doctor you’d willingly let touch you, save for Isabelle. Which had been a mistake.

  Now, stripped down to just his boxer-briefs, that odd, vulnerable feeling had already started. Jake shifted on the paper-covered table as the urge to get up and get out got stronger by the second.

  “Just relax and take deep breaths,” Doc Welles told him, reached out and put a firm hand on his shoulder for a few seconds. “Your pulse is fast—are you in that much pain?”

  “No. Not much pain.”

  “Try to relax. It’s just me,” Doc Welles said.

  Jake nodded, managed to do all right while the doctor had the stethoscope against his chest. As the doc moved around toward his back, the familiar burst of panic tightened his throat.

  “Relax. You’re doing fine,” Doc Welles repeated. For the ninetieth time.

  Jake nodded, closed his eyes and tried to think about anything else. Didn’t matter—he was automatically transported to that terrible place, and the only comfort he could give himself was that he’d come out stronger in the end. Stronger than he was at fourteen, when his grades sucked and he partied too much because he hadn’t given a shit.

  He’d been wise beyond his years, wild as anything, and he’d never let on to anyone that his home life was a living hell, even to Nick, who’d known about the abuse from the time they’d become friends. Chris had discovered it as well, that first day they’d met—and fought—in the principal’s office.

  Neither of his brothers told. No, that had happened in a much different way.

  That particular day, when Principal Reilly cornered him on the back stairs of the school, Jake felt a small tug of fear. That in itself was strange, because he had no fear of authority. No one could ever hurt him as badly as he’d already been hurt.

  Still, Jake thought briefly about running, the way he had yesterday when he’d been called down for the school physical. The school brought in the district’s doctor for those students who hadn’t had their annual physicals done when September rolled around.

  Normally, Jake didn’t have to deal with that. But this year, a particularly brutal beating had left him unable to go to the doctor his stepfather usually brought him to, one who ignored the abuse.

  The truant officer knew Jake and his hangouts too well for Jake to think about skipping any days during the first two weeks of school, and Jake knew better than to ask his stepfather for any kind of absence note.

  “Don’t you dare fuck things up for me at that school,” Steve had warned him countless times. He was still the custodian at the K–8 school, while Jake had moved on to the high school building.

  And now here he was, behind the curtain, with the principal and vice principal on the other side in case he tried to bolt. There was no place to hide, so he’d taken off his shirt and waited while the doctor checked his ears and listened to his heart and maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t going to have to turn around.

  The doctor reached over Jake’s shoulder to put the stethoscope on his back and froze.

  “Turn around,” the doctor said, his voice oddly gentle and completely different in tone than it had been minutes before. When Jake hesitated, he became impatient and physically turned Jake himself, twisting his body on the table.

  There was a gasp—and Jake knew that hearing it from a grown man couldn’t be good. It had been a long time since he’d looked in a mirror himself.

  But the noise brought the principal through the curtain. “Holy shit. Holy mother of God.”

  Jake stood there stock-still, eyes shut, and just fucking prayed it would be over soon.

  “Jake, look at me.” Principal Reilly was in front of him, his eyes kind. Too kind. Christ, he hated that more than anything. “Who did this to you?”

  And Jake, who’d already perfected the art of lying, told him calmly, “I fell off my bike,” even though he knew it wasn’t going to work this time.

  “I have to report this,” the doctor said.

  “Let me call his father in first,” Mr. Reilly said. In his effort to save Jake, the principal severely miscalculated.

  Jake remembered fighting the urge to retch as Reilly said things like A man-to-man talk in front of a social worker could stop the abuse. He’d spoken of anger management classes and family therapy and, finally, of foster care.

  Steve’s not my fucking family, he’d wanted to say, wanted to tell Reilly to call in Chris’s mother and father instead, because they got it. Kenny especially because as much as he’d wanted to confront Steve when he’d discovered the abuse two weeks earlier, he’d understood how much worse things could get for Jake if he did so. The bond between Jake and Chris’s family that had cropped up within hours of meeting them had surprised the shit out of Jake, who’d long since grown to hate surprises of any kind.

  In retrospect, Jake understood what Reilly had attempted to do. In fact, years after Jake had left school he had gone back to thank him for trying. He could tell Reilly still harbored deep guilt about what happened, hadn’t realized he was fighting years of conditioning. Jake had a perfect opportunity that day and he did nothing. A big part of that had to do with a fierce pride and an equally fierce guilt of his own.

  He hadn’t thought about all of this in years. Hadn’t had those damned nightmares in years, until …

  He shut his eyes tight and pictured Isabelle standing in front of him, strong and happy, color in her cheeks, and his anger dissipated into a strange sense of peace.

  “Your stitches didn’t rip. Actually, they look great. And new,” Doc Welles said and Jake opened his eyes and checked out his own side. It was bruised and swollen, but he’d had worse.

  “Yeah, well, they pulled last night. Dr. Markham did these.”

  “Who?”

  “She’s new on base, working at the clinic.”

  “Ah, the plastic surgeon. Yes, she’s good.” Doc Welles wrote something on the chart. “Still on the antibiotics?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll put in my report to your CO. I’ll clear you for light duty in two weeks if everything stays the way it’s going. Which means don’t overdo it,” Doc Welles said sternly.

  “I hope he didn’t rip his stitches.” The low, controlled drawl of Jake’s CO, John “Saint” St. James floated over him.

  Jake looked at Doc Welles, who didn’t even glance up as he wrote on Jake’s chart. “He didn’t.”

  Saint sent a pointed look in Jake’s direction. “With me
.”

  Jake put on his shirt, thanked the doc and walked out of the office with Saint.

  “You’re supposed to be home. Resting.” Saint frowned at him as they walked along toward the meeting room where Team Twelve worked, fought and planned together.

  It was a look Jake was more than used to, since he’d pushed Saint well beyond his normal boiling point more times than either man could count and knew that this time Saint was nowhere close to reaching that threshold

  “I’m resting. Trust me,” Jake muttered. “I don’t want anything to hold me up from getting back to active duty.”

  “You’re behind on your paperwork,” Saint said.

  “That has nothing to do with active duty, Saint. But it’ll get done,” Jake assured him, thought about the pile of file folders he’d dumped somewhere on his desk that were most decidedly nowhere near getting done. But hell, Saint didn’t have to know everything.

  “It’d better,” Saint said, gave him a firm pat on the shoulder even though his eyes were elsewhere.

  Jake followed his gaze, looking across the lot in time to see the team, including Nick, readying to hump it down the beach for an extended morning PT session. Ten miles in full gear. The air’s chill would help, but by the end of the first mile they’d be pulling for breath in the icy air, their senior chief yelling about their times, calling them lazy-assed bastards and threatening to take away everything from leave to their balls, and yeah, things were normal around here.

  “I know you want to get back. But don’t push it,” Saint said. Jake glanced at his CO, the man rumored to have wrestled alligators for money in his younger days, the same guy who’d had his appendix and gallbladder removed and walked out of the hospital before his anesthesia had completely worn off because he refused to be catered to.

  Saint had taken on Team Twelve when it was in its formative years—when it seemed like it was going to become the place for those SEALs who were just slightly too far over the edge to deal well with much authority. Saint gave the right kind of authority, understood the men’s wild streaks, knew when to rein them in and when to let them run with it.

  There aren’t a lot of options for military men unless they’re smart when they get in. The smart ones get an education so they can do something beyond backwater security, Saint drilled into his men’s heads, over and over, encouraged them to take more classes, to better themselves, not to fall into the lure of private contracting.

  Saint might have to do some more talking to Nick. Not that Jake planned on bringing up Nick’s activities to Saint. Right now he was more than grateful for Nick’s contact into that world—if Jake couldn’t get the intel he needed on his own, he’d have to turn to other avenues.

  When she’d first gotten word about the kidnapping of her daughter, Jeannie Cresswell had refused to leave her office. She’d stayed right next to the phone on her desk until it rang with good news, had refused food, drink, and well-meaning idiots who told her everything would be all right.

  She’d only trusted Cal to tell her so, because she didn’t put stock in fools.

  Two long months had passed since her daughter came home and still things weren’t returning to normal.

  She’d kicked off her shoes right after she’d climbed into the limousine that would take her to see Isabelle and Cal. Now she rubbed her feet against the soft carpeting in a restless pattern as she stared out the window at the busy Friday evening traffic, heart heavy with the knowledge that the man she’d hired to protect her daughter was at large.

  Jeannie had envisioned having to meet Rafe at three in the morning under the cover of darkness in some seedy part of town, sans bodyguards. Instead, he’d made an appointment and come to her office.

  He’d come to her and she’d handed him everything he’d needed to hurt her only child. Unknowingly, but that didn’t matter—the guilt would haunt her forever.

  “I know she’s been to more dangerous places,” she said. “However, now that I’ve taken office—”

  “You’ve received threats.”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “I’ve been doing this long enough, Senator Cresswell. You know my credentials.”

  “From what I know about Doctors Without Borders, they won’t allow bodyguards of any kind. They won’t even allow weapons, which to me is utter foolishness, bringing young, impressionable people into the organization and giving them no way to protect themselves.”

  “We all know where you stand on gun control, Senator.”

  “Yes, I suppose you do.”

  “Don’t worry about me getting into the program under a different cover. That’s my job. I’ll take care of that and the entire situation. Leave it all to me.”

  Those words, a blanket of comfort at the time, now tortured her every waking moment.

  “Leave it all to me,” Cal told her.

  “But if we tell her that Rafe’s been captured and she finds out otherwise, she’ll never forgive us,” she said.

  “If we tell her he’s still at large, she’ll never be able to get on with her life,” Cal countered as they stood in the sterile hallway outside Isabelle’s room in step-down care, where her daughter lay healing. “This isn’t a high priority case for them. You have the authority to call them off. In the meantime, I’ll put my own people on the case. They’ll be able to accomplish more without the red tape, and without risking the press getting involved.”

  The FBI and CIA had completed their questioning and for the past week Isabelle asked daily, sometimes twice a day, if there was any word on Rafe.

  The only time Isabelle looked content was when she slept, clutching an invisible hand in her own.

  Jeannie had let Cal tell the lie, had watched the relief settle in as Isabelle believed what she needed to believe.

  You owed her that much.

  She touched the locked charm she wore around her neck, a picture of Isabelle on one side and James on the other. James never would have let her lie to Isabelle.

  Five years together, twenty-three years gone and the memories were still so fresh.

  She’d been so young when she’d met James, but she’d never been innocent. Growing up a military brat had taken care of that quickly, especially having an Army captain for a father and a two-star general for an uncle. Jeannie’s own first words were a jumbled combination of curses and direct orders, or at least that’s the way her mother always told the story.

  And even though she’d grown up with and dated military men almost exclusively, in her mind it was all just about passing the time. Besides, she’d always been drawn to men she couldn’t fully have, the type who refused to buckle under to her charm. And the way she’d looked in her teens and twenties, men like that were few and far between, and by the time she was seventeen, she’d never been swept off her feet with any of them. James had been no exception.

  For one thing, he was Navy, not Army, and beyond that fact alone, she’d firmly set it in her mind that she wasn’t going the military route. She was going to college, higher education, shaking off the family service record.

  Her father had wanted a boy, but was resigned to her path, as if he knew she’d have different plans.

  “Women always have their own minds,” he used to say, and she could never tell if he thought that was good or bad. Knowing him, it was neither—it just was.

  But James had been relentless in his pursuit. It was flattering, heady. And it had torn her interest away from her own pursuit of another man who had never wanted to be tied down.

  Yes, she’d made the right choice at the time. The proper choice. James had been there to pick up the pieces when she was eighteen, and now, at forty-six, she was still waiting for Cal to come and put all the pieces back together. Because he owed her in so many different ways, and she intended to see he made full payment on his promises this time.

  CHAPTER

  8

  After clearing a few would-be Marines for boot camp, the clinic was unusually quiet, so much so that the ri
nging of her office phone made Isabelle start. She’d been concentrating on the forms in front of her, health forms—the ones she needed to complete for her MSF tour, and for some reason, pen was not hitting paper as easily as she thought it should.

  She picked up the receiver.

  “Dr. Markham,” she said, was greeted with silence on the other end. “Hello—is anyone there?”

  Someone was there … She wondered for a second if it was Jake but realized that he’d call her cell, not the office phone—he’d programmed his number into her phone last night before they’d left for the accident scene. If he was ever going to call her at all.

  She wasn’t going to apologize to him—and memory served that he also sucked at apologies.

  “Hello? Is anyone there?” Still no answer and she hung on the line for a few more seconds, an uncomfortable feeling growing in her gut before she put the receiver back in its cradle.

  It was at times like this that her instincts crawled, thoughts of what-if crept into her mind and the four walls began to shift and move in toward her.

  Stop it. You’re safe. Rafe is locked up tight.

  In the deepest, darkest recesses of her mind, she often wondered how long a man with such specialized training could be kept under lock and key.

  “Clara, I’m going to lunch,” she called out as the older nurse passed her doorway.

  “Physicals start up again in an hour.”

  “I’ll be back before then.” She closed the door and changed quickly into her running clothes, bundling up more than she’d like to combat the chill her body would need to fight through before she got moving.

  The phone rang again—she stared at it for a second and then ignored it, pushing through the back door of the clinic to the outside.

  It was not the best weather to exert herself, especially the way her side ached, but the thought of running on the treadmill in the gym was too confining. She wanted to be—needed to be—outside, with no limits to the wide-open space around her.